Paul Mackenzie, the self-styled pastor behind Kenya’s Shakahola Forest horror, has been convicted of murdering 191 of his own followers.

Mackenzie was found guilty alongside his wife Rhoda Maweu and 29 other members of his Good News International Ministries.

The verdict came after a trial that laid bare how hundreds were starved to death in the name of reaching heaven.

Lady Justice Diana Kavedza Mochache delivered the historic verdict on Monday at the Mombasa Law Courts, capping the case with a judgment running over 1,000 pages.

She ordered each of the 31 convicts to stand, one by one, as she pronounced them guilty on all 191 counts; 190 children and one adult.

The ruling is the first major conviction from the Shakahola tragedy that shocked the world in 2023.

This was when investigators began exhuming bodies from shallow graves deep inside Kilifi’s Shakahola Forest.

More than 400 bodies have been recovered in total.

A Church Built on Control

According to the court, Mackenzie did not simply preach but built a system of total obedience.

Prosecutors showed that long before families sold their belongings and moved into the forest, they had been isolated from their relatives.

They were ordered to quit their jobs, pull their children from school and stop seeking medical care, including vaccines for children.

By the time they reached Shakahola, Justice Mochache said, they had been psychologically broken.

She told the court that followers had lost any sense of self and personal limits.

They believed they could not make even small decisions without Mackenzie’s permission.

That dependence was deliberate, the court found.

Again, the doctrine was clear: the world was ending, and fasting, first the children, then women, then men, was the fastest way to meet Jesus.

The fast was not voluntary.

Witnesses described children being beaten, tied up and locked in huts for asking for food.

Armed enforcers patrolled the forest to stop anyone from leaving.

The Children

The heart of the judgment was the children.

The court ruled that none of the 190 children could have consented to starving to death.

Many were between 6 and 10 years old; some were infants only months old.

Mackenzie’s lawyers had argued that adults chose to fast for religious reasons.

The judge dismissed that argument, saying the children were denied food, punished for trying to eat, and had no ability to resist.

The move to Shakahola itself, she said, was not just preaching, it was planned, supervised and enforced by Mackenzie.

The 31 will remain in custody at Shimo La Tewa Prison until sentencing on November 6.

The state is expected to ask for the maximum penalty.

For families who lost entire households in the forest, the verdict brings the first legal closure, more than 3 years after the first grave was found.